Dorks And Losers

There have been many movies fea­tur­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live cast-members like Cone­heads (Dan Aykroyd), The Ladies Man (Tim Mead­ows) and Wayne’s World (Mike Myers and Dana Car­vey). Tommy Boy fea­tures two cast-members — Chris Far­ley and David Spade — in a sur­pris­ingly not-really-funny, but amus­ing movie.

Far­ley plays Tommy, a recent seven-year col­lege grad­u­ate, who returns home to help his dad (Brian Den­nehy) run the fam­ily auto busi­ness. His dad mar­ries Bev­erly (Bo Derek), but dur­ing the wed­ding recep­tion he dies. Tommy is left to keep the busi­ness afloat from a hos­tile takeover by a rival com­pany and from the bank. In order to save the com­pany, Tommy embarks on a trip with Richard Hay­den (David Spade) across coun­try to sell the brake pads that Tommy’s dad pro­claimed as the company’s future.

What struck me most about the film was the incred­i­bly close rela­tion­ship that Tommy has with his dad. Tommy is a sort of screw-up and doesn’t take most things seri­ously, but his dad sees through that. Under­neath Tommy is an earnest and good-natured guy who cares for his fam­ily (even his rot­ten step-brother) and friends (pretty much his entire home­town). He gets it from his dad whose fam­ily busi­ness is strong because his rela­tion­ships with his part­ners and work­ers are so strong.

Tommy Boy can be treated as a part-comedy/part-road movie hybrid. One road movie ele­ment is the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the method of travel — usu­ally an auto­mo­bile. Richard loves his GTX and main­tains it well. But through­out the film, Tommy man­ages to harm Richard’s beloved auto and by the end of the film it’s in such a sham­bles that it resem­bles a go-cart more than a car. There’s one scene where Richard and Tommy are dri­ving and the car’s hood ran­domly opens up, blind­ing (who’s dri­ving). The car zig zags through traf­fic and avoids cars and trucks before finally com­ing to a stop on the shoulder.

See­ing Tommy Boy for the first time in many years has got­ten me to notice how unwell the film has aged. Some of Farley’s phys­i­cal com­edy didn’t get me moti­vated and pumped up as I remem­ber being in the past. Could it be that my cyn­i­cal views of today’s SNL and how “bad” it is com­pared to Farley’s SNL or Chevy Chase’s SNL? Per­haps. Maybe com­edy itself has changed to the point where gross-out (Road Trip) or adult (Side­ways) come­dies are the only movies that can make me laugh. Tommy Boy fits some­where in-between; although it’s a well-made film, TB just couldn’t put more than a smile on my face (except for that one scene where a part of Richard almost flies off when he gets a lit­tle too close to a car engine).

Bonus Mate­r­ial:

There is a full-length com­men­tary by the film’s direc­tor Peter Segal (Anger Man­age­ment, 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard) and until Steven Spiel­berg records an audio com­men­tary for Jaws, I won’t lis­ten to a sin­gle com­men­tary, but kudos to Segal for par­tic­i­pat­ing in not only a com­men­tary, but for the many bonus mate­r­ial as well.

There are four fea­turettes included: “Tommy Boy: Behind The Laugh­ter,” a 30 minute doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of the film with inter­views from the Segal, Spade, the exec­u­tive pro­ducer Robert K. Weiss and pro­ducer Lorne Michaels; “Sto­ries From The Side Of The Road,” an 11 minute com­pi­la­tion of the evo­lu­tion of a few scenes like “We’re Burn­ing Alive” (Far­ley try­ing to sell brake pads by play­ing with the toy cars on the executive’s desk), “Udder Mad­ness” (Far­ley tak­ing Rob Lowe to go cowtip­ping) and “Flesh­dance” (Farley’s ren­di­tion of the song “Maniac” from the film Flash­dance); “Just The Two Of Us,” a nine minute fea­turette on the spe­cial rela­tion­ship and chem­istry between Far­ley and Spade (fun­ni­est thing is how every­one describes the fights that the two would have over Lowe); and “Grow­ing Up Far­ley,” a spe­cial inter­view with Farley’s broth­ers John and Kevin with them talk­ing about grow­ing up with Chris.

There are six deleted, 15 extended and six alter­nate scenes, which are mostly ordi­nary and unfunny — although the extended scene of Tommy con­vinc­ing Helen to make him some chicken wings is cool to see. There is a pretty funny gag reel included as well. There are also 19 TV spots, a photo gallery and a the­atri­cal trailer.

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